Rich Goss's Blog (92)

Just now on CNN, Mr. Lanhee Chen, former public policy director for Mr. Romney, stated his old boss was a "Patriot". How the heck can he declare Romney a patriot when it was his turn to fight for his country, after being a hawk at BYU, encouraging fellow students to fight in Viet Nam and watching them die, choose to become a missionary to France. Just think, the people that gave the world Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau and Jean Paul Satre converting to Mormonism! "Surreal" is…

I recently watched a TV documentary about John Muir. The line that struck me was being out on the lake in the early evening inspires the soul. We feel part of it all, part of nature. I think that's the terrible damage religion has done to humanity. The church teaches we were created by God, and “in God's own image.” (What horseshit! When they told me that, I pictured God sitting on a toilet bowl.) They told us we're not part of nature, and in doing so did…

The meaning of life? Stand out by the beach or a pristine forest in the deep of night and observe the vastness of it all. As Carl Sagan says, billions and billions of stars. And then you learn almost all of it is hydrogen and helium and the most common phase of matter is a liquid plasma—scary and hellish stuff.…

I just watched Roman Polanski's “The Pianist”. Now, being Polish, my mother ran a Polish restaurant on Kent Avenue across from the Brooklyn Navy Yard during the war, I was aghast at the brutality and cruelty perpetrated on my mother and father's family in Krakow and Warsaw, respectively. A fuckin' horror, just about the lowest levels of human depravity and sadism ever experienced.

To me, the immortal Shakespeare was the greatest writer in human history. The movie reminded…

What an irony that my first published work has just been republished and will probably be my last. Back in January 1970 Timothy Leary spoke at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights and my poem Simon was published in the Village Voice. As some sort of committee member, my girlfriend Pat waited for an elevator next to him and whipped out the paper. Pointing at the page, “Hey, my boyfriend just had his poem published in the Voice, care to listen?” and…

There's no way this guy could have possibly read the book. It's more about Shakespeare and opera than about any sordid drug deals or squalid crack houses. I find it a tragedy that Americans are divorced from the arts and culturally deprived. The legacy of past generations is so wonderful. The latter stage of my life is devoted to the humanities.…

Later this fall Pope Francis is scheduled to address the U.S. Congress, most likely on the subject of the environmental conservation. That's fine. Not much anybody can say against the idea. As California burns and many islands feel the slow encroachment of the sea along their beaches, and species go extinct every day, unless there's a drastic change in consciousness a global catastrophe is imminent.…

Here's an excerpt from Mirror Reversal that supports Ruth's "Future generations" comment of Sept. 20. I think it's very beautiful and poignant, but I guess that doesn't count. I wrote it.

We shouldn't say atheists don't believe in the afterlife. All the nonsense about St. Peter and the Pearly Gates, divine judgment, and heaven and hell is folly or wishful thinking. Divine justice is a myth and I believe Hitler sleeps in his grave (nonexistence) as peacefully as St. Francis…

I just placed "Pot Stories" on Amazon's KDP program, meaning you can download it free. There's so much fun and information in there it blows my mind. In the various and sundry essays the eBook answers questions like:

How come there are no priests listed on the National List of Sex Offenders?

Why will humans hand over the dominance of the planet to the cybernetic mind?

From Barbara Walker: At funerals why is it unacceptable to criticize and disparage the reputation of the…

Thanks, Judy. Here's a vignette about “DUI Story.” I've always considered Shakespeare to be the greatest writer. Not just for great stories, but many of his verses are a pleasure to listen to, just like music. Romeo and Juliette's balcony scene, surely Hamlet's…

The following is an excerpt from the revised High School with Rudy Giuliani which I made highly autobiographical as I approach the end of life's journey. It's interesting how patriotic I was in younger days but ever since Spiro Agnew pleaded "Nolo Contendere" my feelings about government and the country did a 180. This little rant shows why I believe political corruption should be considered one of the most contemptible crimes a person can commit.

The Garin Hoover Radio Show is on line. It was recorded March 12 and featured a Jew (Manny), a Christian (Rev Terry Jones), an imam and an atheist (moi). The discussion was centered around the question, "Is Islam a Religion of Peace?"

The debate was often heated and vituperative. Rev Jones, I thought, was very good with an all-American cowboy mentality. He told the imam, "we don't want your Sharia Law, so don't even try to bring it here." He made national news last year by trying…

The next essay in Pot Stories and Humanist Essays is “Ten Reasons Not To Believe.” A couple of them are unique and especially important as they are key ideas in my philosophy and worldview. Number One, of course, is obvious and should occur to everybody at one time or another. God knows where you’re going, heaven or hell, and if the latter, created you anyway. Think of it: a constant, torturous, hopeless state of eternal pain and suffering. No hope of ever getting out. …

I’m thinking of renaming the first essay “Cardinal Ratzinger and Chaos Theory” to

“The Story of the Moron and the Mouse”

Ever wonder why there’re no clergy listed on the National Sex Offender List? To my mind the first story gives a plausible explanation. It also tells how the cards are stacked against the poor and working class. In 1964, W. Bush was admitted to Yale with inferior grades as a “legacy student.” As you know, I’m not religious, but this…

Joan, thanks from your encouragement on Pot Stories. I'm writing a little summery of each piece and I'm really having fun just going over this stuff. There're 27 separate pieces, each with its own information and lessons to be learned. And the diversity of history and thought. All for three bucks.

True story: I was in a Manhattan Blarney Stone bar drinking fifty-cent beers. It was the mid-'80s. I got involved in conversation with a reporter for the New York Post, which…

Many church or mosque goers believe religion gives their lives “meaning.” It’s a delusion, an appealing but false concept. What meaning could being credulous enough to believe the preposterous give one’s life? If anything, I think a good and magnanimous god would disdain such behavior. They’re abandoning reason for self-interest and wishful thinking.

In biology, the Prime Directive (PD) governs all life down to insects, worms and beyond. The force that governs all life is…

The Hoover Radio Show went fine but only as an icebreaker to more important issues. It reminded me of early Christian bishops arguing over how many angels can reside on the head of a pin. I felt like standing up and yelling out, “Look, as you sit here in this luxurious setting, people are getting their heads chopped off, wars are being fought, 15 million people (mostly children) are starving to death and billions have to live in fear of opening their mouth or saying the wrong thing. Isn’t…

It’s fitting to have this war criminal, McCarthyite and lying “crook” who abandoned the White House in disgrace, as the figurehead for the modern War on Drugs, the holocaust of the modern age. Tens of thousands of lives were ruined, psychologically damaged (including mine), and plain murdered to keep the nightmare going. All perpetrated so many professions could feed off the mayhem like sea gulls circling a countless school of surface-feeding sardines. …

If anyone happened to catch the radio or TV show “Imus in the Morning” show last week, they presented a bit where two regulars on the show interviewed random passersby and asked the questions, “Do you smoke grass?” Upon a positive answer they’d then ask questions a third-grader should know, “Who’s the Secretary of State?” or “Where on the map is Afghanistan?” They then played dimwit answers of apparent potheads, judging by tattered jeans and disheveled hair: “I dunno” and “Isn’t that in the…

It’s by the Humanists of Sarasota Bay. The reason it’s so superb and wonderful is that Pot Stories of and Humanist Essays of Barbara Walker and I has just been added to the recommended Reading List—to me, anyway.

I’m really honored to be in the company of such important authors. I made the joke: if the majority of Americans read these books it would it would knock modern “In God We Trust” society on…